


Letters & Polaroids

by patronusfeder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, remus lupin is bi no i don't take constructive criticism, tonks is also queer thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patronusfeder/pseuds/patronusfeder
Summary: Weeks after his death, Remus and Tonks go through a box of Sirius Black's old belongings.Doing so, Tonks discovers something about Remus that makes her realise quite a few things about him.Also, I don't support Rowling or any of her views.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 35





	Letters & Polaroids

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this way before i finished all the young dudes by mskingbean89 and before i basically accepted her work as canon. i updated some parts that would stick to the image of remus that i had before but also worked some details from all the young dudes into it. you don't have to know that story (though i recommend reading it wholeheartedly) to read this, though.
> 
> also, i'm not too crazy about the age difference but i absolutely love tonks and wrote this, trying to get a better idea of her and her relationship with remus.
> 
> feel free to help me out language-wise, i'm not yet used to writing in english

Tonks sighed and looked at the cardboard box that was sitting on her desk.  
Again, she read the fresh print on top of the box, still not quite comprehending the words.

'DECEASED,' the red print said. 'Sirius Black,' it continued. 'Date of birth: Nov. 3rd, 1959. Orion Black (Wizard), Walburga Black (Witch). Ed.: Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1971-1978.'

Another note added the date of June 18 1996 as the day of Sirius Black's passing.  
It was Kingley's neat yet small handwriting.

With shaking hands Tonks touched the small letters and numbers on top of the old box.  
Suddenly, she felt hot tears stinging in her eyes which was such a contrast to the icy cold that she had felt rising in her chest when she had brought the box into her office earlier.

When Dumbledore had made Sirius stay at his old home at Grimmauldplace it had become Kingley's and Tonks's duty to lay false traces of his whereabouts every now and then. As aurors of the ministry they had taken over the search for him, making sure no one ever came too close to finding out where Sirius actually was.  
To make their work easier, Sirius had given some of his old belongings to them that they had used to make some of their fake evidence seem more real.

And now everything he had left behind fit into this ugly cardboard box that was filled with old books and documents and photographs and letters.

Tonks sighed and closed her eyes, wiping away tears with the cuffs of her sweater before she rose from her chair.

She had decided to look through Sirius's old things before giving them away. They had to be stored in the archives, that were the rules by protocol. But she felt like there was too much in that box that nobody had gone through yet and that nobody outside the order should see. She and Kingsley hadn't been through everything yet and Tonks knew it wouldn't be safe to give it into the hands of the ministry like that.  
And maybe there were a few things she could keep. Maybe Remus would like to keep a few things, too.

Remus.

Tonks had not seen him for a few weeks now.  
They had talked, right after Sirius's death when he had come to visit her in the hospital, to make sure she was alright. He had not stayed long but as they had parted, both of them had promised to be there for each other, to help each other out until they had found a way to deal with things.

Tonks had broken her promise for work, her favourite way of ignoring things didn't feel like dealing with yet.  
Remus, on the other hand, had broken his promise to be alone.

Since that fight in the Department of Mysteries Remus had become more reserved than Tonks had ever seen him before. Whenever she had finally managed to visit him after a long day at the ministry, he had barely even said a word. He had been silent and empty, just waiting for her to leave again.  
He had never actually told her to. He was too polite, or maybe too stupid or too quiet. But she knew anyway, he didn't have to say it.

But now Tonks had decided that it didn't matter anymore what he wanted.  
What mattered more was what he needed.  
And he definitely did not need to be alone anymore, he had been alone for too long already.

So she picked up the box from her desk and carried it under her arm. Apparating with a stuffed cardboard box wasn't exactly a hard task for her as she was trained in apparating with injured people or people she'd had arrested or even dead bodies, though she didn't really want to thinnk about that right now.  
But she was clumsy and she almost stumbled over her own feet when she finally arrived at Grimmauldplace.

Balancing the box on one of her hips, she fumbled for her keys for a while.  
And after a few tries she managed to unlock the door and break the safety charms. She got in.

It was dark and rather chilly inside.

Her wand in her left hand, Tonks whispered, "Lumos" and carefully, she made her way through the dark corridor.  
With her other hand she held the box, trying not to drop it on the floor. She knew the noise would wake the portrait of old Mrs Black and she really did not want to make that kind of entrance. Not today.  
She just didn't have the nerves for that.

Tonks grunted softly when she let the box drop onto the old kitchen table. Several scratches marked the dark wood, signs of years and years of usage.  
Maybe Sirius and his brother had left behind some of them, maybe one of them had even done so deliberately.  
He had always loved provoking his family.

Tonks was so absorbed in that thought that she jumped and nearly tripped when, suddenly, the kitchen lights were turned on.  
She whirled around, pointing her wand at the dark figure at the end of the room.

"Shit, Remus," she sighed when she finally recognised him in the dark. She lowered her wand and went over to him, pullig him into a tight hug that he only returned with some hesitation. "Merlin, you really startled me."  
"Sorry. Didn't know it's you," he mumbled into her shoulder. "I just heard something and wanted to make sure it wasn't - Didn't know you'd come."

She sighed and hugged him even tighter.

"How are you?" she asked, feeling a bit light-headed after being startled like that. "I'm worried about you. You're so alone and - I'm woried about you," she repeated flatly, noticing how much she sounded like Molly, saying those things.  
"I'm fine," Remus mumbled.

But his arms, that tightened around her as he said that, almost made her believe that he wasn't exactly telling her the truth. But she didn't mention it, even when he buried his face in her shoulder, taking a deep breath.  
Tonks just closed her eyes, hugging him even closer.

"There's something I wanna show you," she told him, reluctantly letting go of him.  
But she didn't meet his eyes, she couldn't bring herself to do so, not yet. She didn't feel strong enough.  
"Kingsley," she continued, "he gave me - He gave me Sirius's old things to look through. Would you like to help?"

Remus remained silent.  
But his hands had started shaking slighty when she mentioned Sirius's name and she was sure she could see tears in his eyes, though he tried to hide them from her.

"Remus." She didn't know what to say. "You don't have to help with that. No, of course you don't have to." She shook her head, feeling stupid and foolish for coming here like that when, obviously, neither of them were ready to even talk about Sirius, let alone say his name out loud. "Yeah, you're probably right, it was stupid of me to come here and think that -"  
"Shh, Tonks." Quickly, he wiped away his tears and gave her a single nod. "No, I'd like to help." He hesitated for a moment, then shoved his hands into his pockets. "Thank you for coming here, Tonks. You - It means a lot."

She just nodded.  
Then she gave him a sad little smile.

"Okay, sure," she said, still nodding at him "Okay, yeah, let's do this, then."

She turned towards the box and quickly opened it before Remus could see the red print on top.  
Tonks didn't want him to feel like she had felt when she had first seen it.

The scent of old parchment and paper ascended from the box and Tonks paused for a moment, taking a deep breath of it.  
She noticed Remus doing the same next to her and glanced at him.

Then she grabbed a book that she had found a while ago.  
It was an old thing, its worn cover made of light brown leather, almost the colour of Remus's eyes. Most pages had long turned yellow and there were wrinkles everywhere. The leathery cover felt rough and coarse unter her fingers, as if someone had used to hold it a lot.

'Remus John Lupin,' it said on the front.

It was the reason why Tonks had put the book on top of everything else.  
She had been meaning to ask Sirius about it but then she had never got the chance to do so.  
Instead, she had decided that it would be the best to return it to Remus, to whom the book seemed to belong.

"I didn't read it," she said quickly when she handed him the book. "I mean, I don't know why he even had a book with your name on it but I think you should take it if you don't want the ministry to have it."

Remus took it from her, not saying anything at all. His face grew a bit pale when he finally held it in his hands and Tonks noticed that his fingers were trembling ever so slightly when he touched the letters of his name on the cover.  
It was rather obvious that he knew exactly what was inside that book and he also knew why Sirius had had it in his possession.

But without giving it any further look, he put the book on the table next to him, his left hand resting gently on top as if he was trying to protect it from Tonks.

"I didn't know your name's John," she said, trying to ignore how curious Remus had made her feel about it all.  
She really wanted to know what was inside that book now.  
She wanted to know why he had given it to Sirius and why, in the end, Sirius had given it away.

Remus shrugged slightly, reminding Tonks that she had just said something to him.

"It's not a very interesting name, is it?" he said with another small shrug. "I mean, it never really felt worth mentioning, you know."  
"Well, I wish I had a less interesting name," Tonks said.

She grabbed a stack of old photographs and sat down on the kitchen table, motioning for Remus to come closer and sit with her.  
Remus hesitated but then he let go of the book that he had still been touching with his fingertips and came over to her. He sat down next to Tonks, leaning closer to her to see what it was that she wanted to show him.

"It's some photographs from school," she said, patting the old polaroids in her lap. "You never told me you had a buzzcut when you were a teenager," she added with a gentle chuckle.

Remus smiled a sheepish little smile when he looked at her and he even seemed to be blushing, just a bit.  
Tonks couldn't help but feel her heart beating a bit faster because of that smile.

"That's us," Remus said, tapping on one of the photographs in her hands.

It showed five young adults in front of the Hogwarts castle, smiling brightly at the camera. One of four men had his arm wrapped around a young woman with fiery red hair and he was pressing a kiss to her temple. At first, Tonks had mistaken the man with the brown skin and the curly black hair and the round glasses to be Harry Potter. But he was missing the scar on his forehead and his eyes were brown, so dark they almost looked black, and not green.  
Which probably meant that the young couple in the photograph must have been James and Lily Potter.

"We called ourselves the marauders," Remus told her. "Sirius -" He stopped for a moment but then he seemed to try and ignore it and just continued talking, "Sirius must have told you about it every now and then, he loved talking about those years. He loved taking credit for our most stupid pranks. Anyway, that's Lily and James." He pointed at the young couple. "And this is Sirius, this is me and that's Peter." He hesitated for a moment but before Tonks could say anything he just nodded. "We were seventeen. This was taken a few days before our N.E.W.T.s, I think."

Tonks smiled and touched the younger version of Remus in the picture. Back then, he hadn't had any grey streaks in his hair yet. He had worn it a bit longer than he wore it now and the curls fell into his eyes and were hiding parts of his face. It was probably to hide his most obvious scars, Tonks thought.  
He smiled a sheepish smile and dodged her fingertip, his shoulder bumping into Sirius who playfully struck him between the ribs with his elbow. They both started laughing and when Tonks tried to touch Sirius as well he flipped her the bird with a handsome yet rebellious grin.

Tonks chuckled.

"And this is James?" she asked, showing Remus another photograph she had seen in her office earlier.

It showed Lily who was sitting in a forest, with a deer resting its beautiful head in her lap. It seemed to be dozing off.  
Remus nodded.

"They had been a couple for a few months before James told her that he, Peter and Sirius had become animagi for me."  
"Did she know about you, then?" Tonks asked and Remus nodded again.  
"Lily and I had been friends before James had developed that gigantic crush on her. Besides the marauders, she was one of the first people to know. I trusted her a lot."

Tonks watched him for a moment before she remembered another photograph.  
She started looking for it and when she found it she showed it to Remus.

It was a muggle polaroid of Lily and Remus. She had wrapped one freckled arm around his shoulders, hugging him close to her, while she was pressing a kiss to his cheek. Remus was smiling and blushing and he looked genuinely happy, much younger and less serious than Tonks had ever seen him.  
There were fewer scars on his face and his soft curls looked long and heavy. Both of them seemed to be happy, there was not a trace of worry on their faces.

When Tonks had seen the photograph for the first time, she had thought that, maybe, this woman had been Remus's girlfriend in school. And she had felt a sudden wave of jealousy towards this young woman who was hugging and kissing Remus Lupin, though it hadn't sat right with her.

"She was my best friend," Remus whispered, waking Tonks from her thoughts. "I mean, the marauders were my best friends too, of course. But Lily - She was there to listen when I wasn't ready to talk to the others yet. She really was an incredible woman."

Tonks watched him for a moment. She saw the tears in his eyes that he was trying to fight and she knew she would never understand what he was feeling right now. She would never understand what he had lost to the war.  
She took his trembling hand and gave him the photograph.  
He should keep it. He should keep all of it.

Remus sniffled softly and gave Tonks a sad smile, tears were running down his face now.

"Thank you, Tonks," he whispered and he leaned over to gently bump his shoulder into hers, wiping away the tears.

Then they went back to looking through the photographs.  
There were more muggle polaroids of all of them and Remus told Tonks that it had been Lily's camera. It had been a present from her parents for her sixteenth birhday.

They even found old photographs of Sirius with McGonagall and Dumbledore and Slughorn and a few more teachers Tonks didn't really recognise. Sirius was giving the camera a thumbs-up while professor McGonagall was shaking her head at him, a small smile on her lips that she seemed to he fighting.  
Remus told her that Sirius had made him take a photo of him with almost every teacher they'd had back in fifth grade. To make sure he wouldn't be too upset if he didn't get through his O.W.L.s, he had told them.

"I think he tried to collect as many memories as he could. To have something to hold on to, you know," Remus mumbled. "He hated having to go home for the summer. He hated having to leave Hogwarts and us. Said it felt like saying good-bye for ever, even when it wasn't even two months."

Tonks watched the photographs for a little while, imagining what Sirius must have felt like, sitting in his room upstairs, a bunch of pictures in his hands to hold on to before he could go back to school where he could be with his friends again.

"At some point he started staying over at James's," Remus continued after a while. "His parents loved him. I mean, how could they not, everyone loved Sirius Black. But they atually cared for him and loved him like he was their own, you could just see it in their faces when they looked at him. And James loved him like a brother, like he had known him since birth." Remus shrugged. "Naturally, Sirius didn't want to come back here anymore. And he couldn't stay with me, either, so he basically moved into James's house at some point, with Peter just down the street."

"Why?" Tonks asked. Remus gave her a quizzical look. "I mean, why couldn't he stay with you? Was it your parents?"

He stayed silent for a moment, looking like he was trying to find the right words.

"I grew uup in a children's home. My parents are dead, Tonks," he said carefully.

Tonks opened her mouth, then closed it again. 

"Shit," she mumbled.

She'd noticed before how little Remus ever talked about his family. She'd been quite sure that he didn't have any siblings, though she hadn't figured out yet why he didn't seem to stay in touch with his parents a lot. The fact that he just might not have any parents, did never really occur to her at all.

"Shit," she repeated again, feeling even more foolish now. "I'm sorry, Remus, I didn't know."  
"It's okay. I don't really talk about it a lot, how would you know?" He shrugged. "It's not exactly what people want to hear, is it? 'Hello, my name's Remus Lupin and I'm a werewolf and my father decided to kill himself because of that so my muggle mum gave me away to live in some children's home where I started smoking at the age of twelve."

He glanced at her, then lowered his head.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to do that," he said.

Tonks just nodded, trying to show him that it was okay.  
It might not be what other people wanted to hear but it was what she wanted to know. She wanted to know more about him, to understand.  
But she didn't tell him that. He'd only think her crazy.

So she put the pile of photographs on the table, giving Remus the chance to take the ones he wanted to keep.  
But he chose much fewer than she had thought he would.

Then Tonks reached back into the box and grabbed a few letters.  
She was about to drop them on the table as well when Remus touched her arm and held her back.

"May I?" he asked, pointing at the letters she was holding in her hands.

Tonks just nodded and handed them over.  
Then she bent over the box again and went through more photographs. Most of them were old family portraits and such.  
No wonder Sirius had given those away.

"Hey, look," she said, waving at Remus with a photograph in her hand that showed Sirius with a baby in his arms.  
He must have been about thirteen years old and the baby's thin hair was changing its colour every few seconds. It looked like it had been taken during Christmas.

"Is that - That's you, isn't it?" Remus said with a smile. He let the letter he had been reading drop into his lap and took the photograph to look at it. "My, he never told us about that."  
"Dad said mom asked him not to," Tonks said and she could see in Remus's face that she had to explain that a bit. "You know how Sirius's mother burned his name from the family tree?" she aksed and the expression on Remus's face grew bitter as he nodded. "They did that to my mom, too, for marrying my dad. He's a muggle born, you see, so I've never even been a part of the family tree. And nice great auntie Walburga Black forbid Sirius to remain in touch with my mom but because she was his favourite aunt and because he was a rebell he did anyway. But you know about that, Sirius told how you two used to share the records mum send him."

Tonks chuckled and looked at the photograph in Remus's hands.

"She allowed him to meet me a few times, but he had to swear not to tell anyone," she said. "She didn't want him to get into trouble. Well, into more trouble than he usually was in already."

Remus handed her the photograph and Tonks put it on the table, close to her thigh.  
She decided she would keep that one.

"What's that you're reading?" she asked Remus, leaning over to him to glance at the letter he had picked up again. Remus folded it up firmly and put it under his book so Tonks wasn't able to see much of it anymore.  
"Nothing," he said. "I just - I thought I recognised the letter, that's all. Maybe the ministry shouldn't have it,I think I'm going to keep it. Did you read it?"

Tonks watched him carefully.

"I tried to avoid going through his letters," she said after a while. "Didn't feel right." She gave the letter a nod. "Why, what's in it? Is it something bad?"  
"No, it's nothing you should worry about," Remus replied.

The way he'd said that made quite clear that this conversation was over now.  
Tonks sighed. She hated not knowing about things. She hated being left out.  
But it seemed like Remus just didn't want her to know about this or the book and so she shrugged and decided to leave it be. He probably had his reasons.

Instead, she reached into the box again, putting even more old documents on the table.

"Oh look, there's more photographs," she said when she noticed another small pile of old pictures below some letters. "I don't think I've seen those before, they must have been -"

She reached for them.  
And she felt her mouth open when she saw the first one, but there was no sound coming from her lips.

It was a photograph of a young Remus kissing a young Sirius.

Tonks looked at the Remus that was sitting next to her on the kitchen table.  
All colour had vanished from his face. He looked pale and anxious, his lips parted slightly.  
He seemed to be looking for words, for an apology, for some kind of explanation.

"Wait." She shook her head. "No, Remus, did you and Sirius - Did you -"

Remus closed his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands against them.  
With a sigh he nodded.

"He was - He was, like, my boyfriend in school," he mumbled, his voice so quiet and low that Tonks almost didn't understand what he'd said.

She looked at the picture again, then at him.  
He seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

"But -" She didn't know what to say. "Why didn't you ever tell me? No, okay, privacy, I get it, but - Wait, what happened after Azkaban, did you two ever -"  
"I was - Yeah, we tried again, after Azkaban," he said.

Remus sighed and buried his face in his hands again.  
Suddenly, he looked very tired, very old. He looked as if he'd rather be somewhere else. Anywhere but here with her.

"I am sorry you had to see this, Tonks," he mumbled into his hands. "And I guess you're angry now, I understa-"  
"Angry?" Tonks cut him off. "I'm not angry, Remus, why should I be?" He looked at her like he was about to list several reasons why she should be angry at him so she continued talking to make sure he didn't get that chance. "Maybe I'm a bit surprised, yeah," she said. "But that's all. Merlin, I got a weird feeling about you two but I'd never have thought that you two actually -"

She shook her head and looked at the photograph again.

"Did they know?" she asked. "James and Lily and Peter, I mean." Remus nodded a that.  
"We told them eventually," he said. "And they were being okay about it," he added, answering a question that Tonks had been about to ask next. "But we didn't really tell anyone else at school. It was safer that way."  
"I'm sorry, Remus," Tonks said, touching his knee lightly.

She thought about her friends and her parents. Her father was the kindest man she'd ever known. He'd probably invite everyone into his home if her mother only let him. And even though her mother was a Black, her heart was in the right place. She loved Tonks and Ted more than anything and she'd never dare to criticise Tonks for things she had no power over.  
This way, Tonks had never really felt like she didn't belong with her family, not like Sirius had. And she had never disappointed her parents, even when she had told them about her first girlfriend in fifth grade. Even when she had told them that she didn't always feel like a woman. That she felt like she was different and that she actually liked it.

It suddenly struck her how lucky she had been..

"Did you have other boyfriends?" Tonks asked him carefully. "Or girlfriends?"

Remus looked at her.

"I - Yeah, actually." He seemed to be blushing, just a bit. "There was a muggle. He kept seeing me for twelve years, while Sirius -" He shook his head. "He left me for Sirius in the end. I think it hurt him much more than it hurt me but he'd done it anyway." A sad smile was playing at his lips. "He was the bravest man I've ever known."

"Okay, you're so much more interesting than I thought, Remus Lupin," Tonks said with a smile.

She looked at the photograph again, then she looked at the next one.  
It was another polaroid of Remus and Sirius, both of them huddled together tightly. They seemed to be asleep and Tonks suspected that the photo had been taken in the Gryffinfor common room since there were a lot of red and golden colours in the back.

"These are truly beautiful, Remus," she said, handing him the small pile of photographs without looking at the others.  
She felt like they belonged to Remus and Remus only. And he'd show her if he felt ready, she knew that.

"Thank you, Tonks." He gave her a smile before he reached for the letter and the book that was still lying next to him on the table.  
He put the letter inside the book, along with the few pictures he had chosen earlier and the photographs Tonks had just given to him.

When he caught Tonks trying to catch a look at the book, he closed it again with a small grin.  
He looked at it, his thumbs brushing over the letters of his name absent-mindedly.

"It's a diary, sort of," he told her after a while. "I put a lot of my thoughts into it when I felt like I needed to." He shrugged. "I gave it to Sirius in sixth year, as a birthday present. That's why he had it."  
"Thoughts?" Tonks asked.  
"Quotes," Remus said with another shrug. "Drawings. Some letters. Whatever was on my mind that I felt needed to be put down." He chuckled and shook his head. "We were young and I was very much in love with him. I knew it was rather silly."  
"I don't think it's silly," Tonks said and the smile Remus gave her made her stomach twist in a funny way.

She leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder. Remus put his arm around her, something he had started doing a while ago now whenever she got close enough.  
His thumb started brushing her shoulder.

"Thank you, Tonks," he repeated again before he leaned over and hugged her close, pressing a quick kiss to her temple.  
The slight stubble on his chin tickled her.

"I'm just glad those photographs didn't end up in the archives," Tonks said. She chuckled. "Imagine the face Kingsley would have made if he found those of you and Sirius."  
"I'm sure Sirius would have found it tremendously hilarious, though," he mumbled.

Then he sighed before he was quiet for a long time.

"We need more photographs of us," Tonks said after a while and Remus chuckled again.  
"I guess we do," he agreed with a small nod.

And he pulled her closer, letting his chin rest on top of her head, his arm wrapped around her shoulder tightly.


End file.
